


Gifted

by Gh0stWr1ter



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bittersweet, Character Study, Gen, Retrospective view on Yuri's and Nikolai's life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8891932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gh0stWr1ter/pseuds/Gh0stWr1ter
Summary: Nikolai had lived a long life, he never expected to receive a second son. Never considered being thrown back into the thick of parenthood.But thinking back it wasn’t all that bad after all.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BoxWineConfessions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/gifts).



The steady electronic beat of the heart monitor kept Nikolai from finding peace in his too stiff, starchy white bed. His sense of smell had no doubt deteriorated over the years of his long life, but he had enough memories to fuel the illusion of cold air heavy with the plumes of disinfectant. His sole comfort was the view to the snowy garden, both a blessing and a curse. Only the critical patients were given the opportunity to take the bed next to the window. It was a nice gesture, and he’d had enough visits to the geriatrics ward to see the pattern.

Those next to the window never took the place for too long.

His fellow bed mate coughed from behind his curtain, a cold that couldn’t be pushed, everything moved much slower at their age.

Nikolai could feel the faintest breeze squeeze its way past the closed window. The nurses kept scolding him, advising him to pull his curtain to avoid catching cold like his friend to the left. They were right, of course, the cold air did make it more difficult to breathe. But laying on a bed hardly demanded much cardio on his already half-collapsed heart.

Nikolai had lived a long life.

He’d raised two generations, albeit the second unexpected, was but anything but regretful.

Alexei Plisetsky lived a short life.

It was his son’s dream to be a ballet dancer for the Bolshoi academy. He wasn’t a natural, but he tried hard and practised endlessly. At the tender age of fifteen, the dream was crushed when he landed badly breaking a bone in his ankle.

He could never become a professional dancer.

Alexei had built his life around the sole vision with such fortitude, that all other points of self-confidence and stability had become fragile.

As a single parent Nikolai had never so keenly felt the absence of his Faina as in those months. Alexei had been ten when his mother died of meningitus. Faina left this earth in less than two days after she was admitted into hospital. Nikolai had little room to grieve, it wasn’t an easy transition without his dear wife, but the village was extremely supportive and taught him the secrets to perfect pirozhki.

Alexei’s breakdown five years later was much more painful, as it became apparent to Nikolai, that despite his efforts and the support given by others he had failed his wife in the guidance of their son.

His son had always been an optimist, a trait he fortunately inherited from his mother. His son picked himself back up, made a complete change in his studies towards the sciences. His new dream was to become a doctor.

Alexei wasn’t particularly gifted at anything, aside from his tenacity. Unfortunately dedication never quite equated to success. He failed to achieve the marks to be accepted into medicine, but made do and studied Physiotherapy instead.

 

Alexei introduced Nikolai to Svetlana one snowy morning, with simple matching golden loops on their hands with equally radiant smiles.

The Plisetsky’s were never a rich family. The wedding was a small simple matter, in the local chapel and a cosy reception in the church hall.

It brought tears of joy to his eyes, and Nikolai found himself slipping out to speak to his wife in the nearby cemetery. It was a long overdue conversation, and while he felt guilty for waiting so long, he couldn’t help but feel like a heavy weight had been lifted from his chest.

Alexei Plisetsky, their son, had grown into a fine young man.

 

Yuri Plisetsky was born on a cold dewy morning, the first day of spring.

The first time he held his grandson in his arms Nikolai felt a twinge in his heart, but it was only a small pain, over the years he’d grown to accept such drastic life events of their son would never be shared with his wife.

Nikolai enjoyed the first few years of his grandson’s life in ways he wished he’d paid more attention to Alexei. It may have been due to his less direct position on Yuri’s life, or simply due to the fact that he’d already brought up one child and had experienced first-hand how fleeting and precious the years were. He could re-live his regrets of leaving Alexei to Faina to care for their child while he spent majority of the time working at the factory.

 

Svetlana’s younger sister married on a rare sunny day in Spring about a month after Yuri’s sixth birthday. The ceremony was held in the nearby city of Ivanovo, the couple had originally planned to take a small vacation together, but Yuri caught a stomach bug the day before and Svetlana almost ditched the journey entirely.

After much persuading and an extended conversation with the village doctor the couple decided to attend the wedding ceremony and drive back the same day instead of staying overnight as they’d originally planned.

The Plisetsky’s car had been rear-ended into the path of an oncoming truck. The Paramedics told Nikolai that his son unclipped his seatbelt and shielded his wife from the brunt of the collision.

Alexei Plisetsky was announced dead at the scene.

Svetlana Plisetsky’s heart stopped beating sixteen hours and thirty seven minutes after she was admitted into ICU.

 

Nikolai Plisetsky had never once considered attending his son’s funeral. The church was much too full for a ceremony signifying the end of the couple’s lives. It felt fundamentally wrong.

Little Yuri could barely comprehend the situation, feeling overwhelmed by the crowds paying their respects in a hall much too quiet for the number of people it held, and feeling frustrated and lonely that his mother wasn’t coming to save him from the cold smoky incensed hall and touchy hands of their neighbours and friends.

 

Once more Nikolai found himself with little room to grieve, not when a child demanded and deserved his attention so much more than the ghosts of his children.

Nikolai found himself once more at a loss on how to raise a child. The difficulties had morphed from those of basic housekeeping and cooking, to physically keeping up with the demands of raising a child. He could no longer run alongside, or throw the boy up in the air like the other children’s fathers. But he could cook a damn good pirozhki.

Yuri looked almost nothing like his son. Ash blonde hair instead of dark brown, bright green eyes instead of hazel. Yuri had taken after his mother much more than his father in terms of appearances, and Nikolai couldn’t help but wish it was a sign the child would not grow up with the curse his genes seemed to carry down the Plisetsky line. No matter how fundamentally foolish and superstitious the notion sounded.

Yuri was gifted, unlike his son, at dancing. Always at the top of his class without ever exerting the same amount of effort Alexei had given. Nikolai didn’t want to make the same mistake as last time. He wouldn’t let this child’s life become ruled by one notion, even if it was his son’s most sought after dream. Nikolai could tell his son still felt regret towards his injury, he saw it every time they passed the local theatre, Svetlana noticed too simply rubbing his arm in comfort whenever he paused.

Yuri was seven the first time he took him to the frozen lake nearby. A starfish of woolen clothes and bright green eyes. The boy became obsessed in a way that both broke and soothed Nikolai’s hardened heart. If there was one trait Yuri had taken from his father, it would be their passion. Their eyes were a different colour, their faces a different shape, but their expression was the same.

Nikolai resigned himself to the situation. They were magnetic, those gifted, or cursed with the drive to become number one. Their quiet selfishness, equally as frustrating as loveable. They shone so much brighter than those around them, like a flame attracting moths.

 

The night before Yuri’s first competition as a junior skater, Nikolai unpacked the dusty box hidden behind years of nick-nacks the old medals his father had won in his short career as a dancer. They were mostly commendations with the rare bronze or silver.

Yuri’s first reaction was shock. Nikolai had never told his grandson about Alexei’s dream to become a ballet dancer, not wanting it to become a second-hand dream to his already gifted child. They both talked more than they usually would in a night, neither of them being wordy people. But it was different, Nikolai found, having a meaningless conversation, and telling stories of Alexei’s life.

It had been Nikolai’s intention to appease any of Yuri’s stress for the competition, that his father grew into a great man without ever achieving a gold medal.

Yuri Plisetsky stood on the podium in first place, watching other children cry over their losses. Like the tears shed by his father.

 

Yuri was impulsive in ways his father never was, yet reserved in ways his father never faltered. There’s loneliness in natural skill that Nikolai had never realised until his grandson turned out to be a prodigy.

Alexei always had a strong group of friends wherever he went, a social magnet through the combination of his optimism and humility. It was hard to scorn someone skill earned through nothing but through hard practice.

Nikolai couldn’t say that Yuri had a close friend or confidant. Yet the boy never seemed worried at his lack of social extensions. He was much quieter, like Nikolai himself, but the man couldn’t help but worry it was due to Yuri being brought up with his moody grandfather as his sole guardian.

 

At age fifteen Yuri Plisetsky broke the world record for the men’s short program, and took Gold.

Maybe it was old age, his dusty, battered mind incapable of strong emotions like shock or bewilderment. He felt nothing but relief, and warmth in his chest, blessing the heavens that through some blessed alignment in the stars, his grandson had grown into a fine man.

Yuri had his life on the right track. Travelling the world had given the boy a sense of bearing he could never have achieved being cooped up in some insignificant village in Russia.

 

Nikolai had lived a long life. He could join his family in heaven a happy man.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this (and didn’t find it too boring heh), I was super emotional when writing this just thinking about how Yuri’s family situation had left his grandfather as his only family. I also realised half-way through (or maybe ¾ of the way through) that I’d made some parallels between Yuri’s fictional father and Otabek [COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONAL BUT I’M LOVING THE COINCIDENCE] I must be subconsciously linking Yuri’s immediate liking of Otabek to a slight electra complex (only minus the rivalry part lel) ((omfg Freud is life, study psych –you won’t regret)).  
> OH MY GOD UPDATE FROM EPISODE 12 YURI WON GOLD!


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